Picking Up Stuff and a Small Fire Update

This morning we drove up to Big Basin Vineyards to pick up some equipment that we had there that we won't be using this year. Three 300 liter topping tanks and 5 barrel racks needed to come back home. I'll probably end up selling those since we don't have a lot of storage room and they are sitting in the garage right now. Everything went pretty smooth and just a few hours to make the run.

Stefania and I have been getting inquires and emails about the fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Dave Tong has been doing a good job on his blog of providing updates so I've not posted any. The fire is far from any of our vineyards and we've not had anything to worry about. The area burning is one of least populated in the entire mountains, and too cool to grow grapes.

S0me people have asked us about smoke so I thought I'd take a couple pictures at Big Basin this morning. Big Basin is about 6 miles from the fire lines, and at the top of a basin that would collect smoke if it was an issue. We've all been pretty luck in that the smoke has mostly blown out to sea. Below you can see one of the newer plantings at Big Basin and the bright blue and clear skies.


This is an older section of the vineyard. You can see a little fog still hanging in the horizon, but no smoke.

We're very safe of course, and the day the fire started I had a good laugh at the TV coverage. There was a reporter at the fire HQ in Watsonville, about 25 miles from the fire, with her 'fire coat' on. When she went back to the newsroom in San Jose, the desk anchors were actually the same distance from the fire. No coats for them though.